I lose it in the sun sometimes, a rain
of light, spray of shrapnel in my eyes,
flamethrowers cutting through the dark.
Then suddenly the ball finds shadows nailed
across the outfield wall glamorous with signs:
the SCHAEFER beer and CAMELS of the lost.

Lost because they've never known the truly lost:
the bodies floating pink with blood and rain
as we waded in, rifles held like little signs
above our heads, the dead with nightmare eyes
burning into ours. When I dream of nailing
triples high against the wall and wake to dark

hotel rooms, I see them there, lying dark
as waves along the beach that night we lost
the whole platoon except for three of us nailed
flat beneath barbed wire and a heavy rain
of cannon fire. Smart pitchers know the eyes
will sometimes give away the batter, sure signs

of hitter's lust, to break a slump, ignore the sign
from third, waive the bunt. An Okie kid the darkest
night on Guam told me this, death swimming in his eyes
and like me sick our best years of ball were lost
to the bloody goddamned war. That night the rain
stopped. A suicide attack, and we were almost nailed

to Hirohito's cross. Shrapnel flew like nails,
and I collapsed, a kind of seizure, bawling, signs
the war was stuck inside my brain, the pink rain
that never stops. The dead. The endless dark.
A coma is a house of dreams. You're lost
in it, no doors or windows, but then your eyes

one day open to the world again, the eyes
of thousands staring down, and those glass nails
of blinding sunlight as you take one deep, lost
in a kind of baseball heaven. The signs
along left field say, WELCOME HOME. The darkest
dreams begin to fade. Happiness comes down like rain.

Lightning strafes the sky. The batter eyes the sign
from first and nails his right cleat to the ground. Dark
clouds loom. We'll lose at home. To rain. Sweet rain.